Bacterial pathogens pose an ongoing threat to public health.
Indeed, bacterial infections are increasingly difficult to treat with conventional antibiotic therapies, due to the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains. For example, despite the fact that turberculosis used to be readily treatable, its causative agent mycobacterium tuberculosis infects almost one third of the human population. In fact, tuberculosis was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization. Antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria are also potential agents for bioterrorism.
There is an urgent need for new compositions and methods that can be used alone or in combination with antibiotic therapies to treat bacterial infections.